“Tell me about your girl at the newspaper office. Are you in love with her?”
“We’ve got a thing about each other. How does she come into this?”
“She doesn’t, of course. Except to help me understand what motivates you. If you are in love with a nice girl you’re most likely to understand my problem and sympathize with me. And if you need a lot of money in a hurry to enable you to get married and change your way of life, that would be an important incentive, I should think.”
By her speech, her choice of words, Shayne thought, she exhibited the damnedest mixture of naivete and sophistication he had ever encountered. Her language had a quaintly bookish tinge, as though she had acquired her knowledge of words from reading rather than from the actual give-and-take of conversation with other human beings. All-in-all, Jane Smith intrigued hell out of him at this point, and he was comfortably pleased that she had turned out to be this one instead of either of the other two possibilities he had considered in the Crystal Room.
He said, “I came here to listen to a proposition, Jane. I’ve got a gun and it’s for hire… if the job appeals to me and the price is right.”
She said impulsively, “You’re absolutely wonderful, Mike Wayne. I don’t suppose that’s your real name, is it?”
“No.”
“I didn’t suppose it was… any more than Jane Smith is mine. If you knew how worried I’ve been… the sort of uncouth hoodlum I thought might answer my advertisement. But when I read your reply I thought you couldn’t be so terribly horrible. And you’re not at all. I’m not even embarrassed sitting here talking to you this way,” she ended wonderingly.
Keeping his face impassive, Shayne said, “I’m delighted that you find me couth enough for your purpose. But I still don’t know what that purpose is.”
“Are you enjoying your drink? Shall I order you another?”
“I’m enjoying it very much and I’m not trying to push you too fast, Jane. I can stay here all night if necessary.” He stretched out his long legs and lit another cigarette.
She laughed nervously. “That won’t be necessary. What would you tell your girl-friend?”
“A good, convincing lie.” Leaning back relaxed in his chair, Shayne’s gaze brooded on her face. “How old are you, Jane?”
“Nineteen.”
“At least, that’s past the age of consent in Florida.”
She blushed and averted her face from his, gave her entire attention to sucking lemonade from her glass.
“And I don’t believe this sort of hotel would ask any prying questions,” Shayne went on as though he were considering the matter seriously. “Haven’t you often found it’s easier to talk to a man in the dark while he’s lying in bed beside you than any other time?”
“Please don’t talk that way.” Anger burst from her lips. “Not even jokingly. You’re not a lecherous old man. Are you?”
“All men are lecherous to a certain extent. I suppose I even seem old to nineteen.”
“But you don’t! You’re just nice to talk to. Please don’t spoil it.”
“I won’t.” He made his voice very gentle. “Relax, child. I was just trying to find out something about you in my own inimitable way.”
“Did you?” she asked in a small voice.
“I think so.” Shayne took another sip of cognac and made his voice briskly businesslike again. “Take your own time about getting it off your chest.”
“Would you like to make fifty thousand dollars?”
“Sure. Who wouldn’t?”
“But… is that enough to… to induce you to kill a man?”
“Who do you want killed, Jane?”
“My stepfather.”
5
The two words lay harsh and ugly on the floor between them. Jane Smith gulped in her breath unevenly after she spoke, and closed her eyes tightly. Her body went lax and she lay huddled at one corner of the sofa like a limp rag doll. Two tears squeezed out from under her eyelids and coursed slowly down her cheeks.
Slowly her head bent forward as though the weight were too much for the slender column of her neck, and she lifted both hands, spread-fingered to cover her face in an attitude of utter despair. Her shining black hair fell forward to form a lacy curtain in front of her hands.
Shayne sat very still and watched her, his gaunt face deeply trenched, gray eyes narrowed to slits.
She spoke first without shaking back her hair or removing hands from her face. Her voice was tremulous and frightened:
“There. Now I’ve said it out loud. To someone else. I’ve said it to myself so many times. I thought it would sound ugly and nasty and vicious. But it doesn’t.” Her voice took on a wondering note. She slowly lifted her head and brushed back the hair on both sides of her face. Her cheeks were tear-wet, but her eyes were luminous and steady on Shayne.
“Thank you for not looking shocked,” she said softly. “I know it is shocking. But if you only knew… how I hate him. If you only understood how I loathe and despise the very thought of him. How often I’ve wished him dead, and planned to kill him in my thoughts. If you will only listen to me.”
Shayne said steadily, “I’m listening, Jane.”
“His name is Saul Henderson. He married my mother four years ago.” She spoke rapidly, as though she had carefully memorized the speech. “I liked him at first. He seemed gentle and kind, and mother needed him. Mother always needed a man. Someone to make a fuss over her and look after her. He didn’t have much money but that didn’t matter because mother had plenty. And he was good to her, and good for her. She positively bloomed the first few months. It was a marvelous transformation and it made me very happy. And then…” Her voice faltered. She continued to stare at him unblinking and he saw the humiliation and pain in her eyes.
“Oh, I can’t tell you, Mike Wayne. I simply can’t. I thought I could after I met you tonight, but now the words won’t come out. I can’t form them on my lips. I’ll die of shame. Oh my God! what shall I do?”
Like an uncoiling spring she came out of her crouching position on the sofa and flowed across the room to him. A paroxysm of weeping shook her slender body as she dropped to the floor in front of him and clutched his knees with both arms, burying her face between his thighs.
Shayne sat rigidly motionless while her tempest of emotion spent itself. Then, without lifting her head, her voice muffled and toneless, she began talking again.
“He debauched me when I was sixteen. He raped me in a bedroom beside the one where my mother lay dying of cancer. I couldn’t cry out and let her know. I couldn’t.”
Again her bowed shoulders shook with violent sobbing. “Even now I’m glad I didn’t. I’m proud that I submitted to him and she never knew. He was all she had to cling to. She adored him. And she died adoring him.”
She jerked her head up and stared at Shayne fiercely. “Do you understand that I’m glad and proud… even though he kept on using my body. Because my mother never knew or suspected. That’s why I hate him so. Because he turned me into the sort of creature who is proud of being used by a monster like that. Look at me!”
She drew herself erect, smoothing back her hair scornfully. “Tonight you thought I was a sweet young thing. I saw it in your eyes. But I’m debauched. Hideous. A monstrosity. Worse than any syphilitic whore who walks the streets of Miami. Because they let men use their bodies because they want to. To earn money. That’s clean compared to me.
“So now I have shocked you.” She turned away coldly. “I knew, of course, that it couldn’t be. In my wildest imaginings I knew deep down inside of me that I’d never find a man who could sympathize and understand. Why don’t you go, Mike Wayne? I know you can’t stand to even look at me any more.”
She stood rigidly at the window with her back to him. Slim and defiant and so woefully young.
Shayne said, “I’ll stick around awhile, Jane Smith. Why don’t you go back and sit down and tell me more about the situation?”